Restricted Sites == Less Spyware

running several PCs gives me the chance to try things in parallel to see which approach works best. with that in mind, I've noticed that one PC almost never gets infected with spyware, while another is hit frequently. yet, i access the same sites from both computers.

it dawned on me (!) that I'd once added a long list of Restricted Web sites to one PC; I should probably do that on the others. Sadly, the Firefox browser lacks that feature (although it's available as a Plug-In) - their Adblock Extension tries to do the same thing, but it's cumbersome to add a list of sites.



Next, I ran SpyBot and it found The Usual Suspects (ignored by Microsoft AntiSpyware), which I've blogged about before. I deleted the spyware, and will run SpyBot again in a week or so to see if the Restricted Sites change made the expected impact. Worth noting: I populated it automagically using IE-SpyAd.

Aside #9/7: It appears that Microsoft has decided their AntiSpyware product isn't ready to exit Beta test yet (it was due to expire today). Now, I see:
Session.TimeBombDaysRemaining: 213
Session.TimeBombExpirationDate: 7/31/2006